Language, Location And Environment

Department of History

Institute of Archaeology

Please note that this project was completed in 1999
and these pages are no longer maintained.

Celtic Inscribed Stones Project (CISP)

The Project (CISP) is a joint project of the Department of History
and the Institute of Archaeology under the direction of Prof.
Wendy Davies in collaboration with Prof. James Graham-Campbell.
The project was funded by the Humanities Research Board, the Arts
and Humanities Research Board and University College London.
The project currently has two research fellows: Kris Lockyear and Mark Handley.

CISP is undertaking a collaborative, interdisciplinary study of
Medieval Celtic inscriptions. One of its main objectives is the
compilation of an accessible, comprehensive and authoritative database of all known inscriptions. By
bringing this material together in one place and making it readily
available our goal is to turn what is a largely untapped resource
into usable material. Additionally, field work has been
undertaken by Katherine Forsyth (former Research Fellow), Kris
Lockyear, Mark Handley, Paul Kershaw (former Research Fellow),
James Graham-Campbell and Wendy Davies on the material from
Brittany and the Channel Islands which will lead to a published corpus.

The Material

The scope of the project is the Celtic-speaking regions of the
early middle ages, (Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Brittany, the Isle
of Man, and parts of western England, in the period approximately
AD 400-1100). Included are all stone monuments inscribed with
text, whether in the Celtic vernacular or Latin, in the Roman
alphabet or ogham (but excluding runic inscriptions). This
material constitutes primary data of unique evidential value to
historians, archaeologists, historical geographers,
palaeographers, epigraphers, art historians, medieval Latinists
and Celtic linguists.

The Work

CISP's primary objectives are:

to create a comprehensive
database of all known inscribed stones and present it to scholars
in a usable form

to produce a definitive corpus of the inscribed stones of early medieval
Brittany

The Database

Information for the database is being drawn from a variety of
sources including published and unpublished work and internet
resources. The database incorporates details of present and
former location(s), physical characteristics, readings and
expansions, previous work, bibliographic information and, where
available, images. The electronic storage format will allow
periodic updating of the database as research progresses in the
future. Data entry was completed in 1999. Its authors are
Katherine Forsyth, Mark Handley, Paul Kershaw, Kris Lockyear, with
Wendy Davies, James Graham-Campbell and John-Paul Wilson.

The database was originally implemented in Visual dBase 5.5,
and has a fully relational data structure. A data entry application was written by
Kris Lockyear to enable easy and consistent data entry.
Subsequently, the database was transferred to Microsoft Access,
and an application written by Mike Gahan (database consultant) to
create web pages of the data.
P>The database is available over the
World Wide Web in a preliminary version; corrections and
additions will be incorporated and the search facility enhanced in
future releases.

Corpus of the Inscribed Stones of
Brittany

Brittany was excluded from R. A. S. Macalister's
great Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum
(1945-1949), still the fundamental reference for medieval Celtic
inscribed stones. As a result the Breton material has not
been considered alongside the Insular material, as it should be.
To rectify this omission CISP has focussed on the production of a
detailed study of the early medieval inscriptions of Brittany,
which will be published as a separate corpus. Antiquarian and
other accounts have been consulted and all extant stones have been
examined in the field. The stones were recorded by a variety of
means including photography, rubbings and squeezes. The relevant
parts of the early 19th century cadastral maps have also been
examined.

The volume, entitled The Inscriptions of Early Medieval
Brittany,, went to press in January 2000 and will appear by
December 2000. It was written by Wendy Davies, James
Graham-Campbell, Mark Handley, Paul Kershaw, John Koch,
Gwenaël Le Duc and Kris Lockyear, and is being published by
Celtic Studies Publications. The volume contains a
parallel English and French text.

Here are some photographs of the Breton material
taken during fieldwork in May 1997.